3/5
Chris Bailey Green

4/5
Rosamond Pike

5/5
Sam Cam

Stellar: Samantha Cameron is a fan of Christopher Kane

Star attraction: Christopher Kane in his Dalston studio

Christopher Kane has a bright red neon sign in his studio that spells FANGS.

It's very Dalston but also very misleading, since Kane himself is about as vampyric as a stick of candyfloss. "A lovely boy" is what everybody says of him, the diminutive not designed to patronise but to reflect his childlike enthusiasm for his job, his life and London. At 28, Kane is still boyish in the nicest possible way, devoid of cynicism and as enthusiastic as a puppy.

Every season there is a collection that, with freakish clairvoyance, seems to nail exactly what women want to wear before they even know they want to wear it. "Neon lace" might not sound like a wardrobe staple, yet when Kane served up his spring/summer collection in traffic-stopping shades of pink, yellow and green, it felt like all you wanted to buy. This is what a good designer does: breeds lilacs out of the dead land. While other designers sent out safe black recession-friendly trousers, Kane stayed true to himself, took a punt on neon and managed to sell shoals of it, even at £2,200 for a dress.

"There's this idea that British people don't like colour but I think they do," says Kane, himself clad in navy and black, like every other designer under the sun. "I love neon. It's so man-made and loud and obnoxious but that's why I gravitate towards it. It gives you a total high when you work with it. The dyes were a nightmare, though. It was a tough one but we got there in the end. We just had to keep dyeing and trying."

Kane's neon lace is a million miles away from the cream Chantilly served up on a certain Westminster catwalk last month but he is effusive about this, too. "I thought Kate Middleton looked great - so demure, like a fairytale princess. I'm so happy she wore McQueen. What Lee did and what Sarah Burton is doing ... she's such a talented woman, but so lovely and grounded. She really deserved the accolade."

It's a bit of a fashion love-in round Dalston way, where Kane's studio has been based for the past four years. The designers Peter Jensen, Emma Cook and Marios Schwab all work in the area, while Erdem, Louise Gray and Peter Pilotto are near neighbours, too. "It's pretty jam-packed. You always bump into everyone; London is becoming more like New York in that way." Kane favours the George and the Nelson's Head for drinking - "relatively low-key" - and often lunches in Dalston Superstore with "my sister, Tammy".

Ah yes, Tammy. Like Donny and Marie with better clothes, Christopher and Tammy are a sibling double act of such closeness that it has even caused problems for their respective partners in the past (though not now: Kane has been happily ensconced with his lawyer boyfriend for many years, while Tammy recently got engaged). These are siblings who used to put salt in each other's hair and pick it out for fun, whose mutual obsession with saline and style forged a bond that, in the words of Westlife, is unbreakable. To say sister-Tammy is her brother's muse is hugely to understate her role: she is sounding-board, grounding-pad, house model, business brains and integral piece of the magic. Like a lot of people who grew up in a small town (Newarthill, outside Glasgow), the Kane siblings created an interior world whose riches they are still drawing from.

How apposite, then, that Donatella Versace should knock on their door, as if stirred by the memory of her own close relationship with her late brother, Gianni. Donatella "sent out minions to find him", according to one insider, and Kane has been heading up Versus, Versace's second line, since 2009. "You do need to tap yourself when you're with her," says Kane of Donatella. "It was quite weird after being a kid, growing up and idolising Versace, and then 'boom' - you're thrown into the dressing room backstage. But Donatella puts you at ease. She's great that way. I've learned so much from working at Versace. You start to learn from them and it seeps into your own business."

Given the polish and complexity of his collections, it is a shock Kane only has a staff of 16. "It's very intimate, and yet we need to keep the standards as high as those huge maisons with hundreds of staff. I think we do quite a good job."

Indeed - and even more so considering the commercial pressures on the modern-day designer, whose days of sketching a mere two collections a year are long gone. Kane has just finished an art project that involved wrapping 100 London taxis with his famous galaxy print ("my mum'll be proud"), part of an ongoing relationship with Vodafone. Also coming up: a resort collection, an expanded menswear offering, an ongoing collaboration with Johnstons cashmere and a new one with J Brand on which he is uncharacteristically cagey ("Mebbe colour, mebbe not") and - be still, my beating heart! - a capsule collection of bags to be sold exclusively on netaporter.com. The next logical step for brand expansion, planned meticulously at the boardroom table? Nah: just a present for his sister. "Tammy was unwell for a couple of weeks, and I made them as a little 'get well' present. She was quite poorly, so I thought it would cheer her up."

Sure as heck beats Lucozade.

Christopher Kane has designed a bespoke wrap for 100 cabs in Vodafone's fleet of taxis, which are specially fitted with free on-board mobile phone chargers. All customers can also pay for their journeys via their mobiles (free for Vodafone users).